Brazil’s internet gets groundbreaking bill of rights

Brazil’s internet now has its own bill of rights. On 23 April, the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, signed the Marco Civil da Internet, a bill that sets out new guidelines for freedom of expression, net neutrality and data privacy for the country’s 100 million internet users.

Its passage drew excitement from many internet activists, who had been watching the bill’s progress through Congress since 2009. Activists have singled it out for its protection of net neutrality. Many feared it would be compromised under pressure from the telecommunications industry, which lobbied for the inclusion of a “freedom of business model” clause. Although the provision made it into the final version, companies must treat all data packets equally, regardless of content – a cornerstone of net neutrality.

This stands in stark contrast to the US, where the federal government recently lost a high-profile court battle for the right to regulate the country’s internet service providers, who seek to charge varying sums for different speeds of internet access.

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In a statement, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, commended the Marco Civil, saying it “reflects the internet as it should be”.

Work on the Marco Civil was fast-tracked after the country learned that the US National Security Agency was spying on its citizens last year. The revelations made Brazil realise that it needed to play a larger role in how the internet is governed, says Diego Vicentin, a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. “Brazil is trying to take a leadership position, but in a very realistic way,” he says.

Some advocates of internet freedom argue the bill doesn’t go far enough. Internet service providers must retain user data for a minimum of six months, for example, a provision added at the request of law enforcement agencies, who may seek internet activity records as part of an investigation. Under the bill, such information will not be accessible without a court order. Still, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit internet activist group in San Francisco, petitioned Brazil’s Congress to remove the requirement in 2012. They argued that it could harm privacy and that countries like the US, which do not have data retention laws, haven’t had trouble with criminal investigations.

Action must follow

Brazil is just the latest in a long line of similar national declarations about internet freedoms stretching back to the advent of the web in the early 1990s. The trouble is that countries can still renege on these freedoms, says Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. In order for the Marco Civil to become a true beacon of internet freedom, President Rousseff needs to follow up the bill with consistent action that reflects its values, says Vicentin.

In a sense, the timing couldn’t be better for Brazil. Just a few weeks ago the US announced it will relinquish control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a policymaking body that manages domain names and IP addresses. This leaves a large power gap, and raises the question of who will assume the role of running ICANN. With Net Mundial, an international meeting on internet governance, taking place this week in São Paulo, the country has a prime opportunity to assert itself as a champion of internet freedoms, and to gain influence in the international telecommunications community.

“The law itself will not make much of a difference for the rest of the world, but as a blueprint of internet values and principles it will make Brazil significantly more relevant,” says Mayer-Schönberger.